Why Do They Keep Coming Back? The Effect of Push Motives vs. Pull Motives,and Attribute Satisfaction on Repeat Visitation of Tourist Destinations

We conjecture that attribute satisfaction, push motives and pull motives will be positively related to return visitation of tourist destinations. We also hypothesize that push factors will be stronger related to return visitation of tourist destinations than pull factors, both directly and indirectly as mediators of the relationship between attribute satisfaction and return visitation. In addition, we predict that age and gender will moderate the effect of push and pull factors on repeat visitation. Finally, we argue that push factors and pull factors will be mutually reinforcing. To test these hypotheses, we conducted an online survey of repeat tourists’ motives, and received 986 complete responses. Survey participants were randomly chosen from a group that met a series or qualifying questions. PLS-SEM analysis of the data showed that, as we hypothesized, attribute satisfaction and push motives were positively related to repeat visitation. In contrast, pull motives were not related to repeat visitation, either directly or indirectly, but did reinforce the effect of push motives; gender did not moderate either push or pull motives and age moderated only pull motives. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

A model of recommended retail prices

Manufacturers frequently post nonbinding public price recommendations, but neither the rationale for this practice nor its impact on prices is well understood. I develop a model in which recommendations signal a manufacturer's production cost to searching consumers, who then form beliefs about retail prices. Increasing search makes consumers reject offers for the manufacturer's and competitors' products more often, and I show that both consumers and the manufacturer prefer more search when the production cost is low and less search when it is high. With incentives thus aligned, manufacturer recommendations inform consumers via cheap talk, and their removal harms both parties.     

ExpertLens: A system for eliciting opinions from a large pool of non-collocated experts with diverse knowledge

The complexity of policy decision-making raises the need to elicit opinions from large and heterogeneous groups of stakeholders with broad and diverse sets of expertise. Existing options for elicitation include small face-to-face panels of experts by using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT), large Delphi panels whose members do not interact with each other face-to-face, and crowdsourcing, which involves an open call for input issued to a large community of people. In an attempt to close the gap between the practical needs of policy makers and the methodological challenges associated with eliciting opinions of large, diverse, and distributed groups, we have developed a new online elicitation system and methodology called ExpertLens. By optimizing the direct interactions of NGT with the larger number of Delphi participants and the wisdom of “selected crowds,” our approach is designed to save on the costs associated with traditional expert panels, while increasing accuracy in elicitation by reducing the potential for group process losses that can occur in large, diverse, and non-collocated panels whose members interact via asynchronous online discussion boards. The ExpertLens approach is iterative, does not require participants to develop consensus, and determines what the group “thinks” by statistically analyzing data collected in all rounds of the elicitation. This paper describes the ExpertLens system and methodology, briefly discusses recent ExpertLens trials, provides conceptual arguments for why it is an appropriate model for eliciting expert opinions, illustrates its main components and analytics by using an infrastructure investment example, and discusses a research agenda for testing the underlying tenets of the ExpertLens approach.     

Impact of copula choice on the modeling of crop yield basis risk

A number of problems in agricultural economics involve modeling joint distributions for which the assumption of multivariate normality may not be warranted. Yet, very little work has been conducted evaluating competing methods for modeling joint dependence. We develop a simulation framework to evaluate the bias and efficiency impacts of copula choice in the context of evaluating county‐to‐farm basis risk. The results suggest significant differences in performance across various copulas and approaches. The findings have important implications for risk analysis, insurance, and policy modeling problems in agriculture regarding the selection of method to model dependence among random variables.     

A note on wealth effect under CARA utility

There is a simple but overlooked way of capturing the wealth effect under CARA utility via making the absolute-risk aversion parameter wealth-dependent. We implement this approach in the asymmetric information setting of Verrecchia (1982), and compare it with the alternative approach of changing the utility function (Peress, 2004). Ours is a straightforward tractable extension of Verrecchia, while Peress has to resort to approximate methods. Importantly, our closed-form solution reveals that the relation between wealth and wealth share invested in a risky asset can be negative, while Peress’s main result is that this relation is uniquely positive.     

An experimental study of democracy breakdown,income and inequality

Many empirical studies investigate the relationships between economic development, inequality, and democracy survival; however, establishing causal links with naturally occurring cross-country data is problematic. We address this question in a laboratory experiment, where in democracy citizens can invest in profitable projects and vote on income taxation. In the alternative regime—autocracy—efficient investment levels and equitable redistribution are implemented exogenously, but there is a risk of resources being partially expropriated. Citizens can voluntarily switch from democracy to autocracy by a majority vote, which mimics recent historical examples, where voters voluntarily delegate political powers to an autocrat in exchange for a promise of high taxation and redistribution. We find that the likelihood of democracy breakdown increases with the degree of inequality but does not vary with productivity. The link between productivity and democracy survival depends critically on the degree of sophistication of the median voter.     

Contrasting Burns and Bass: Does the transactional‐transformational paradigm live up to Burns' philosophy of transforming leadership?

Both proponents and critics view the transactional‐transformational paradigm (Bass, 1997, 1998) as the brainchild of Burns' (1978) philosophy of transforming leadership. However, Burns (2003) has criticized the paradigm's narrow managerialist orientation and the claim that it is uniformly applicable to any culture and organization. In this article, I first summarize and articulate Burns' (1978, 2003) and Bass' (1985, 1998) approaches toward leadership, then compare them by using a new four‐dimensional framework. Extending previous research (Yukl, 2006), the framework represents a useful tool for detecting the commonalities and differences between leadership theories with respect to the core dimensions, categories, and aspects of leadership. My inspection indicates that Burns' and Bass' conceptions stem from disparate contexts and differ in their applicability. Thus, Burns' (1978) ideas stem from political movements ideally characterized by mutual quest for shared meaning and active collaboration between leaders and followers. Conversely, Bass' (1985) approach springs from military training in which leaders transfer existing knowledge to followers and stimulate their activity by using a variety of tools from inspirational motivation to individualized consideration. This study has important practical implications as it delineates the boundary conditions of the transactional‐transformational paradigm and warns against its uncritical adoption in incongruent leadership contexts.     

Is There a Viable Market for Area-Based Crop Insurance?

The performance of area yield insurance and farm-level multiple peril crop insurance is analyzed for cotton and soybean production in Georgia and South Carolina. The analysis improves on many previous studies by utilizing actual farm-level yield data and by comparing the two types of insurance products not only for actuarially fair premium rates but also for actual unsubsidized and subsidized premium rates. Results suggest that, even in heterogeneous production regions, area yield insurance may be a viable alternative to farm-level insurance when premium rates for farm-level insurance contain large positive wedges.     

Market Segmentation: The Role of Opaque Travel Agencies

This paper investigates the role of discount travel agencies such as Priceline and Hotwire in the market segmentation of the hotel and airline industries. These agencies conceal important characteristics of the offered services, such as hotel locations or flight schedules. We explicitly model this opaque feature and show that it enables service providers to price discriminate between those customers who are sensitive to service characteristics and those who are not. Service providers can profit from such discrimination despite the fact that the opaque feature virtually erases product differentiation and thus intensifies competition. The reason is that the intensified competition for less sensitive customers enables service providers to commit to a higher price for more sensitive customers, which leads to higher profits overall. This explains why airlines or hotels are willing to lose the advantage of product differentiation and offer services through discount travel agencies.